To Die in Halves
by KissTheBoy7
Summary: He always thought that it was impossible to live with only half of a body, half of a soul and half of a mind. It seemed as though that was just what he was doing, although you could hardly call it living. George on Fred's death. Angsty oneshot, R&R!


**A/N: Don't shoot. I know, I know, I should be updating other stories… Blame the plotbunnies. They're giant this season, and they threatened me with their fluffiness. This is decidedly angsty, and THAT you can blame on the death of Fred fanart I've been looking at.**

Disclaimer: If I owned Harry Potter I wouldn't be broke right now, and I most definitely am.

_To Die In Halves_

For months after the Battle, well into December of that year, George didn't sleep.

Ron had taken over the joke shop, always coming home and casting worried glances in his older brother's direction. The redheaded man, only twenty, had found himself a corner in his own room and locked himself inside, sitting there for days on end without food. He drank the glasses of water Molly set beside him in small sips, making them last, and got up to traipse to the bathroom on the rare occasion. Other than that, the earless twin was lost to the world.

_Why should I come out? What is there for me now? My life, it was all based around Fred. I can't do this without him._

They didn't know. Molly and Arthur, they had lost a son. Bill and Charlie, Percy and Ron and Ginny, they had lost a brother. Those things hurt. It was a dear person in their lives, someone whose memory would always be cherished and whose name would induce bitter tears and mourning silence for the years to come. But they didn't know, didn't understand, exactly what George had lost when Fred was killed.

Twins were a special kind of sibling, especially identical ones. They were one and the same; they looked the same, acted the same, sounded the same, shared a birthday and a group of friends. Finished each other's sentences so frequently that many of their friends at Hogwarts had stopped trying to tell them apart. Fred and George Weasley didn't have anything to separate them other than their own minds, their own bodies.

_If I wanted to I could still trick the others into thinking I was him. That would be sick, wouldn't it? Yeah._

Contrary to popular belief, the Weasley twins WERE different people. They were closer than the average set of brothers, but they were each unique. Fred had preferred chocolate frogs to George's favorite, Bertie Bott's Every-Flavor Beans. Each of them contributed valuable quirky ideas to their line of Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes products, and each of them had a very different girlfriend. Alicia… she must be upset, a widow at nineteen, but not as upset as George.

George Weasley had lost his best friend, his brother, and the only person in the world who would always understand him. At night, he dreamed of his identical brother's freckled face grinning at him as he wrapped his angel's wings around him, comforting him even in death. Yet when he woke in the morning, George's face was streaked with rapidly drying tears, and Fred was nowhere to be found.

_You promised. You promised you'd never leave. So where are you now? You're a liar. A LIAR, Fred!_

A half of him had been torn away. The half with both ears, he would later joke, but although his voice was devilishly humorous his chest was hollow. Half of him gone and dead, and the other half struggling to survive without it.

It was mind numbing, at first, to see his brother lying there on the lush green grass that night. It could have been him, for all anyone else knew. His ear was intact, but that was it. It could have been him. So why was it Fred? That thought pierced through the thick haze that was falling, beginning to shield him from the inside from the shock he was experiencing. The anguish wouldn't set in until the next day, when he woke up and screamed for his dead twin; until then, it repeated like a mantra in his head.

_It could have been me. Why wasn't it me?_

He always thought that it was impossible to live with only half of a body, half of a soul and half of a mind. It seemed as though that was just what he was doing, although you could hardly call it living. Every second was agony, the feeling of a whole much bigger than the one in his head being drilled through his heart. How could he live when he was dying inside? Couldn't they just put him out of his misery?

The dreams were unbearable; he stopped sleeping. Pictures in his room, all of him and Fred, together and laughing- smashed, burned, shards of broken glass and the smell of fire lingering in his room the only reminder. Mirrors, they always got to him, too. They were, perhaps, the worst.

_Every day I look in the mirror and I see you. I see you, and then I realize... It's not you. It never will be you. Not ever again._

Later in life, snuggled into a bed with his beautiful wife, Angelina, and his two children, little Fred and baby Roxanne, George remembered his brother. He could see Fred in his son, whom he'd given his name. The same hair, same eyes. He was no replacement for his dead brother, but it sometimes helped the ginger man with the emptiness that filled him when he was alone to see his son, the spitting image of Fred Weasley the first.

His family may have thought that he was there with them, but it wasn't completely true. Half of George had died many years ago, and it stayed that way. The other half pined for its twin, looking hopefully towards the steadily approaching end of his life. Day by day he got closer, closer to eternal bliss, freedom from his grief, and closer to Fred.

Nineteen years later, George had regained the ability to sleep with is loving wife and his two tan-skinned children wedged between them.

But it was only so he could catch a glimpse of Fred again.


End file.
